Nel Silenzio
by StarsOfYaoi
Summary: *1859ish, Gokudera-centric, One-shot* When Gokudera starts playing the piano again, it's to reconcile, recover and finally move on.


**StarsOfYaoi:** I finally decided to post this on to see what people think of it. Gokudera–centric, short piece. First KHR fic.

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**Rating**: K+

**Summary:** (1859ish) When Gokudera starts playing the piano again, it's to reconcile, recover and finally move on.

**Warnings:** shounen–ai, vague spoilers, post TYL arc.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Reborn, it belongs to someone better than me. Thanks.

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**Nel Silenzio**

The room is dark and silent, no one is around –he once more asks himself _why_ he came here, in the middle of the night, but he still has no answer.

He acts on impulses, rationalising only later, when it's too late. It's the same this time, too.

He simply _is_ here.

Midnight, summer vacations. A cool night, after so many hot days. In the school's music room. Staring at the school piano with determined eyes.

Gokudera can't explain what made him move, what made him decide, so randomly, that it was the moment to face old ghosts.

He should question the presence of Hibari in the school grounds as well, but he thinks it's no time to venture somewhere he doesn't want to go. After all, no one ever said Hibari was a normal person –the position of Cloud Guardian fits him rather too well, but Gokudera does not want to indulge in this train of thoughts either, because Hibari is also stronger than he is.

Thinking that only makes him want to growl, but there is nothing he can do about it.

He knows he should have given up as he saw the figure of the School Disciplinary Committee patrolling around, but a look at the school was enough to steel his resolve; he moves swiftly through the grounds, enters the empty, echoing corridors, and feels the barest kind of itch that tastes of freedom, and broken limits.

Maybe it's also because he manages to shift past Hibari's unwavering attention. Gokudera has to smirk at this thought. It's a poor consolation, but it's still something.

He enjoys the feeling, but it is not because he wants to get off by doing bravery escapades that he's there –he doesn't need to remind himself of that.

His footsteps do not echo in the corridors, he's silent when he wants to –when he _needs_ to… Juudaime will find out on his own pretty soon, at the first mission he sends Gokudera to. But it's still too soon, and the right–hand man of Vongola Decimo is simply there on a whim.

He barely breathes, his own body controlled and rigid as he walks past the familiar rooms that in the mornings are his territory, his expression far from the normal frown Tsuna came to know so well, or the open smile he reserves for his Juudaime. Part of him is not here –lost in memories that still haunt him.

A school year has passed since his arrival in Japan, reaching out for his new position in the Vongola family, and yet so much has happened. His boss, the baseball idiot, Reborn… fighting against a future he can't accept.

And Gokudera allows a fleeting smile to bright up his lips –he _likes_ it. Feels like family, but the kind of family he can die for. Family that forced him to understand that he's needed. Wanted. But there are still things he cannot share, and this is one of them.

That is why he's standing in the music room, hoping Hibari will never patrol the third floor, and stares for so long at the piano in front of him.

It feels strange when his fingers brush against the white and black keys, almost in reverie, because now the piano looks smaller than it did years ago (_though it's not the same piano, of course he knows that_), and because he feels like another person.

Was it really him playing, at his mother's side, smiling because he had yet to know what being a Mafia family was about?

Gokudera sits down.

So much is inside that simple gesture, and it speaks of months spent running from that room, ignoring the piano, denial cursing through his veins, and it speaks of sleepless nights passed staring at the ceiling, because in his dreams he'd only hear music and _her_ voice.

The silence around him speaks of refusal, denying friendship and denying responsibility. And yet it also speaks of acceptance and closure. It's almost electrical, and his fingers twitch as they still brush on the keys.

He's not going to play just now, he merely wants to feel, relish in the touch, his senses projected on the piano, on his memories, on his wishes for a future that has yet to come.

The keys feel cool under his fingers, smooth, dustless, ageless. It is not his old piano, this is less expensive and less beautiful, but regal all the same, for his eyes see the past. The black wood is not ebony with the carved symbol of his family, engraved by Italian manufacturers with the language of his father, there is no soft, silky cushion underneath him, but it is still the most stunning thing he has seen in his life.

He is a Mafioso. Damned to a life he chose himself, the only life he can live, and he wonders if he can still shed this side of himself without remorse –but the answer is easy… he cannot own this, it's the piano that owns him.

For this he left his house in the middle of the night, because after having ignored its call for months, he finally is ready.

His breath itches in his lungs–

And his fingers press down.

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The notes come out like silk tissue unfolding in a sweet breeze, as smooth and entrancing as when he was but a child –familiar, striking him deeply, unforgiving.

Each note wraps around his heart, flashes of his past, his pain, his present and the future he wants to change all mixing up together, the music flowing out of his heart rather than through his fingers, beautiful in their elegance.

He still remembers how to play, and it is amazing what he finds about himself as he rediscovers a long since lost passion.

Eyes close, he lets himself go, falling harder than ever, opening up where words are not needed, showing himself like he never could, not even with Juudaime, never with any other, and falls, music drowning him down.

When the last notes play, it is hard to open his eyes.

Taking a shuddering breath, Gokudera finds out his eyes are slightly wet, and curses inwardly, unable to voice his discomfort because he's still partly _not–there_, and sighs.

His hands tremble, and fall from the keyboard, shaking under his inner tension.

Waiting.

The silence is oppressing. For a moment stretched out towards infinity, Gokudera Hayato does not exist, and the world darkens around him as he accepts what he has become, and he vows –_to be better, to grow up, to be stronger, to save him before he dies…_

Then, Hibari steps into the room.

Gokudera renounces without even turning around –he's not in the mood to fight, emptied of everything, he just wants to sleep– and prepares himself to be 'bitten to death', but the attack does not come.

The Storm Guardian does not dare turning around, not because he's afraid, but because the silence now is somewhat different, and he does not want to break it.

He could ask himself many things –why didn't Hibari attack, what was the older guy thinking, why…

But he does not.

There is a shifting noise behind him and Gokudera has the distinct impression Hibari just made himself comfortable on the floor, back against the wall, and is staring at him. He can feel the eyes on his back.

_Why?_

He does not ask.

Hibari does not speak, either. But the silence feels warmer now, somehow, and Gokudera feels calmer than he's ever been.

His hands are firm as he starts playing again.

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When the next night he returns, Hibari is already in the room.

The taller teen's face is unreadable, eyes still emotionless, cruel and cold, but Gokudera ignores him, puffing out smoke from his lips, and sits on the piano's seat with unmatched lack of grace.

He distinctly hears Hibari snort –or hiss, or whatever, it's not like he's really paying attention– but his hands are already on the keyboard and his thoughts are washed away again, to his salvation, his cure…

What the music means to him, is hope.

Pouring himself into it, he plays, forgetting of the figure behind him, and his problems, he reconciles with everything. And forgets, and learns to forgive.

Mostly himself.

Hibari did not confront him on that, and Gokudera feels he's privileged, because it means he's _tolerated_ –which per se is not that good, but he can ignore this, because after all, he's in Hibari's territory. He can't be picky.

But at least he's not engaged in life–threatening fights either.

So he comes back, if not every night then still enough to turn it into a sweet, immoral addiction, relieving stress he didn't know he had.

When training does not turn his mind into a brainless goo, when he does not stop outside Tsuna's house to patrol (_because he's his boss, and he's so clueless at times it's almost funny_), when Yamamoto leaves him alone, he comes back.

And plays.

And the world does not matter.

As weeks pass by, the Storm Guardian realises that it's not just the music he's growing addicted to, but the combined feeling of its freedom, and the eyes fixed on him, that make his lungs burn with need to show his best.

If it has been hatred before, Gokudera does not know what it's turned into now.

The thing is, he does not really care. Not anymore.

As long as he can play, and Hibari comes to listen.

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Hibari simply stares.

The music wraps around him, and in a hidden, deep part of his soul –because he _has_ one– he has to admit he likes it.

A music that is far too beautiful to ignore, a music that bares the soul of the player, and Hibari has always been a good observer, even when he didn't care for what he saw.

He has the power to make it stop, to control it and punish the impudent herbivore for having thought he was allowed to continue. He has the power over the teen's very life, and enjoys the feeling very much.

Because the piano is in his school, because the Storm Guardian, whom he thought worthless, is also in his school.

Playing songs that curl around him like blankets.

He didn't chase Gokudera, Hayato, away because the music stopped him.

He allowed him to return, night after night, because the music trapped him there.

It's discomforting, and confusing, and Hibari does not like that feeling, but it's too late to protest now, because something shifted between him and the player, without his consent. Because that something means everything.

It _repeats_ night after night.

Alluring. Pleasant.

He can't stay away from that damned room. When the music finishes, the first time, Hibari simply enters and sits down. Demanding more with just his presence.

Gokudera appears to agree and starts again, a new, beautiful tune.

The following night Hibari finds himself standing against the wall. Waiting for Gokudera to come and perform his magic. Gokudera does come, and Hibari knows that it's all over.

He's the carnivore who was tamed by a weaker animal.

The younger teen would never know it, but the times he does not come, Hibari still does, and sits in silence, alone, and the tune plays softly in his mind.

The realisation hits him after the fifth night, when he finds himself halfway standing up to move towards the white haired teen.

Somehow, Hibari thinks, together with the song, together with the music, Gokudera also became part of his school. Part of what is _his_, period.

The silence around them erased whatever distance existed, whatever lack of intimacy. Whatever hatred. Comprehension, whatever –it's not like Hibari really wants to ponder over such concepts.

But that weaker, lower–ranked teen suddenly doesn't seem that worthless anymore.

And one night he will move from his position next to the door and shorten the physical distance that separates them.

Hibari does not know what he will do then. What Gokudera will do.

But for now, as far as Gokudera knows, he won't move. Won't speak. Won't _be there_ at all.

As long as the music keeps playing, though, the vibrating notes still tie them together.

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**StarsOfYaoi:** I hope you liked, so please review!


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